


It's Kinda Chalky

by DestielsDestiny



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action & Romance, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Awesome Cloak, BAMF Tony Stark, Canon-Typical Violence, Challenge Story, Chronic Pain, Gen, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, IronStrange Week, Kissing, M/M, Spoilers, Stephen Strange Bamf, Time Travel, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tumblr Prompt, stephen's POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-06 20:30:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14655609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: You can live an entire lifetime by looking into someone’s eyes. His sister used to say that all the time. Stephen never gave it much thought back then. These days, he can think of little else.





	It's Kinda Chalky

**Author's Note:**

> For Monday's prompt of the IronStrange Week on tumblr: https://ironstrangehq.tumblr.com/post/173863936742/ironstrange-week-begins-tomorrow-5142018  
> Prompt: Day 1 (5/14) : First Contact | Last Touch

You can live an entire lifetime by looking into someone’s eyes. His sister used to say that all the time. Stephen never gave it much thought back then. These days, he can think of little else.

00

Wong suggests they try a new ice cream flavour every time Stephen masters a new spell. That kind of work and reward system has never been something Stephen has ever needed to engage in, not even in the depths of med school, but Mordo’s turned back still haunts his every waking moment in those days, and he clings to the idea with an eagerness he cannot quite hide. 

Of course, at the rate he learns things, they make it through all the traditional options in rather short order. And that’s not a boast, Wong rolling his eyes every time a smug grin begins to work its way across his pupil’s face, yes, but with each passing day and devoured quart of flavoured icy milk product, his growled, “Beware of overconfidence Strange. Arrogance is as much your enemy’s friend as inexperience” losing heat with each repetition. 

They are through most of the fruit flavours when Strange has somehow faded into Stephen. 

The first time he curls an Eldritch Whip around Wong’s shields on instinct, twisting with the Cloak rather than against it, he feels a burst of triumph explode inside his chest…only to be slammed into the railing hard enough to make his teeth rattle. 

They both have long since learned to let the Cloak pick him back up, the trembling in his hands never ceasing nor diminishing, but the agony he tries with futile determination to conceal lessening the more he relies on his magic, the more he accepts his new reality and learns to just let someone help him occasionally. 

When he glances in Wong’s direction, he is forced to blink twice, the man’s face split into a wide, and dare he say it proud, grin. “Well done, Stephen.” 

Stephen grinned through a tremor running down his right forearm, the Cloak twitching to wrap around the offending limb like a giant heating pad crossed with a golden retriever. “What happened to the dangers of overconfidence?” 

Wong grinned a moment longer, before turning towards the kitchen, his face once again a mask that Stephen used to call stoical, in the days before he knew better. Now he knows that’s just Wong. “Enough teasing. It’s my turn to choose a flavour.” 

Which is how they end up sitting companionably on the New York Sanctum’s grand staircase, bowls of Stark Raving Hazelnut perched on their knees. The Cloak is not a table. 

A fold of red wrapped obligingly around his left hand as it struggled to grasp the spoon for another small lick. Stephen grimaced. “This is a bit chalky.” 

Wong took a thoughtful taste. “It is…loud.” Stephen snorted. How appropriate. Another lick. “I find it grows on me.”  
The Cloak hovered the bowl closer to Stephen’s spoon. Stephen petted it absently. His relationship with his Relic is complicated at the best of times. They aren’t constant companions, the Cloak seeming to regard its case as a kind of nest slash bedroom when Stephen is in casual wear, puttering around the indoor garden or using magic to flip through yet another book, in astral form or out. 

Yet somehow, it always knew the moment Stephen needed it, his hands cramping on the page of his tenth book, his shoulders shaking as he fought with an ice cream carton. 

It soothed him to sleep, and greeted him in the morning. When danger was present, when an alert went out, even when he was practicing with Wong, it was always there, like an extension of his body. Like an extra limb. 

But whether companion or prosthetic or friend or animated outerwear, the Cloak was one of the few certainties in his life these days. 

A carton appeared before his eyes, Iron Man holding a bunch of hazelnuts and blasting off a chunk of chocolate from a mountain. Stephen snorted. 

Plus, no matter what the circumstance, it always knew how to make him laugh. 

00

Less than a week after they were sitting around calmly sampling Stark Raving Hazelnut, its namesake drops into their lives. More or less literally, even if only vicariously. 

Stephen has gotten very good at not blinking at strange situations. Yes, he’s heard that one a million times. Ha, ha. 

So, the Hulk dropping through his ceiling? Sure, no problem. A giant purple alien plotting galactic domination via finger snapping? Yep, sounds like a Tuesday. 

Tony Stark stretching against a priceless relic? Apparently, that was Stephen’s limit. 

The Cloak snaps against the obnoxious idiot with slightly more force than Stephen would have deemed necessary. But, well, not so much. 

Still, when Stark’s eyes practically rake over him, when annoyance and flippancy melt into intrigue and coiled preparation, Stephen pauses for a moment. Oh. Well, he hadn’t seen that one coming. 

Then New York is blowing up. Again. A taxi cab flies past Stark’s head, and something in Stephen bubbles up. One rather spectacular display of magic later, and somehow he just can’t quite resist, Wong’s warnings of “Arrogance, Stephen!” fading into the back of his mental landscape. 

Which is how he finds himself winking at Tony Stark in the middle the Battle of New York, the Greenwich version. 

And yes, the newspapers will call it that in more realities than they won’t. 

Around his shoulders, the Cloak twitches with interest. 

00

“Hey! You’re back. It’s okay.” Tony’s hands are hot and hurried on his arms, somehow knowing to avoid his hands-oh, right. Stephen remembers belatedly that he never had a chance to grab his gloves, left behind in the library after a late night training session. 

The Cloak wrapped around his chest in a reassuring embrace, and Stephen draws in a raw breath. 

Tony’s eyes are still fixed on his. Stephen stifled a dry sob. In one million, three hundred and twelve of the potential futures, Donna has lived to see forty. And she had adored Tony in every single one. 

Stephen hasn’t had his brain imaged since he started studying magic, has no clear idea of how he is able to use the Time Stone and stay sane. 

Because right now, he just lived roughly fourteen million more lifetimes than most people could even count. And on fast forward or not, he could swear he can still feel each and every one. 

It took about a hundred of them for Stark to become Tony in his mind. 

Tony spoke, snapping Stephen’s eyes to his lips, at the moment still free of frothy blood, his lungs as yet unpunctured. 

“How many did we win?” Stephen shrugged the Cloak closer, straightening away from Tony’s hands with difficulty. He really should have taken his analgesic tea this morning. Yeah, that was the problem. Just that. Nothing else. Not at all. 

Stephen swallowed, and the future Sorcerer Supreme-in twelve million and four realities-spoke in a tone free of tremors, but heavy with certainty. “Just one. “ 

00

Being stabbed in the chest hurts. Stephen knows this, intimately. 

Turns out, watching it be done to someone you care about hurts worse. Stephen has given up thinking in linear time long ago, so quantifying what Tony Stark means to him has gone from negligible to inexplicable in the space of six or so hours, on a linear plane. 

So, what he does next…appears to make no sense. And he can’t say anything. Not really. Even with memories of Tony’s nightmares clawing at the inside of his skull. 

In two million, three hundred thousand and sixty-seven realities, they both survived this, enough to snatch sleep where they can find it, curled together under the Cloak, clinging for warmth until that clinging became something more. So much more. 

But now, Tony’s eyes anguished and confused, Peter about to fragment before his surrogate father’s very eyes, Stephen can only lock his eyes with Tony’s, not blinking, the Cloak torn and frayed but stubbornly holding his weight off the ground as best it can. 

Can only breath in one last, slow breath, and not promise that it will all be okay. “Tony,” there is a wealth of meaning, countless lifetimes of feeling behind that name, and he prays to who knows what that somehow, in this reality, Tony hears even a fraction of that meaning, “There was no other way.” 

He doesn’t apologize. Not for the truth. 

And then, there is nothing. 

00

Their first kiss is on a Monday, steps from 177a, rain soaking them both into shivering, sodden messes for Wong to tut over. 

The Cloak, ever the Eldritch matchmaker, knocks Stephen off his feet, straight into Tony’s chest. 

The armour forms across his skin in moments, stabilizers holding them inches from crashing onto Stephen’s front steps. 

Tony laughs, patting the Cloak in the absent, fond way he’s picked up from Stephen. 

He shakes water from his hair, stretching his tongue out to catch droplets. “What do you think our flavour would be there Strange? Starkly Strange Fudge Surprise? 

And its all so absurd, that Stephen just has to kiss him. 

The Cloak flaps about in excitement, the armour seeming to hum in agreement. And that isn’t alarming at all. 

But Tony tastes like rain and copper and ozone, and Stephen lets himself lean into kiss for as long as he can. 

And for a moment, he forgets to think about realities or probabilities or whether any of this is real or not. 

For a moment, he is just a guy from New York, kissing his boyfriend in the rain on a spring morning in Greenwich village. 

And, well, he wouldn’t be the Sorcerer Supreme if he couldn’t stretch a moment to last forever, now would he. 

00

Wong finds them making out like teenagers, the Cloak an indignant, completely ineffective makeshift umbrella above their heads. 

His mentor scoffs at them even as he magically throws towels their way. But he serves Hulka-Hulka-Burning-Fudge for dinner, so all in all, it’s a good day. 

00

Breath slams back into Stephen’s lungs. There are trees where devastated Titan skyline once burned, a breeze ruffling his hair gently. 

The Cloak whips around his shoulders with a flourish. Stephen turned slowly, his eyes finding Iron Man’s mask. His chest seized in hope. 

“Did we win?”


End file.
